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Ira Allen was born in Cornwall, Connecticut, the youngest of six sons born to Joseph and Mary Baker Allen. In 1771, Allen went to Vermont as surveyor for the Onion River Land Company. The Allen brothers established the company in order to purchase lands under the New Hampshire Grants. Through this, Allen was involved in a dispute with New York over conflicting land claims in the region.[1]

He was a leading figure in the declaration of the Vermont Republic in 1777. He and his brother Ethan, along with Thomas Chittenden and others, were involved in the Haldimand Affair by their discussions with Frederick Haldimand that suggested Vermont might join the British. An alternate explanation is that they used the Haldimand negotiations to both stave off a British invasion of Vermont from Canada and to prod the Continental Congress into recognizing Vermont as an entity separate from New York and New Hampshire and admitting it to the United States.[citation needed]

In 1780, he presented to the Legislature a memorial for the establishment of the University of Vermont.[2] He contributed money and a fifty-acre (20 ha) site at Burlington. He was called the "Metternich of Vermont" and the "Father of the University of Vermont."[3] Ira Allen pledged 4000 British pounds sterling to the University of Vermont, but never donated that money. In response, the Trustees of the University of Vermont secured a Writ of Attachment on his title to the town of Plainfield to try to extract payment of his original 4000 pound pledge.[4]

In 1789, he married Jerusha Enos, the daughter of Roger Enos and Jerusha Hayden Enos. Members of the Allen and Enos families were the original proprietors of Irasburg. Ira Allen subsequently acquired all the proprietary rights to Irasburg and deeded the town to Jerusha Enos as a wedding gift.[8][9][10]

He went to France in 1795 and sought French army intervention for seizing Canada, to create an independent republic called United Columbia.[12] He bought 20,000 muskets and 24 cannons, but was captured at sea, taken to England, placed on trial, and charged with furnishing arms for Irish rebels,[13] but was acquitted after a lawsuit which lasted eight years.[14]

He died in Philadelphia, where he had gone to escape imprisonment for debt. He was originally buried in Philadelphia's Arch Street Presbyterian Cemetery, but his remains were lost when that site was destroyed. There is a cenotaph in his memory at Wetherills Cemetery in Audubon, Pennsylvania, and another at Greenmount Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont. The Ira Allen Chapel on the University of Vermont's main campus was also named after him.[15][16]

^Graffagino, J. Kevin (1991). "A Hard Founding Father to Love". In Daniels, Robert. The University of Vermont, The First Two Hundred Years. Hanover NH: University of Vermont, distributed by University Press of New England. ISBN0874515491.